My Writing and Art lives here….
by Anton Martin Smith antonmartinsmithwrites@gmail.com
On a public holiday the self-employed people laugh.
We all know why.
‘Twas ‘Otago Anniversary’ & I worked.
That’s what everyone else was doing in Otago 180 years ago.
It’s only fitting.
Taking a day off is like anti-celebrating it.
Though most are not as tough as me, I do agree.
By Anton Martin Smith antonmartinsmithwrites@gmail.com
The Envelope was delivered to the smartly dressed compere.
It was a ritzy affair, all paid for via legally stolen cash (of course).
The compare had a blank face even more blank than a blank page,
That was about to be filled with soulless blank copy-cat words,
From one of the many blank-headed nominees.
You know the ones – the ones that put the B in Banal, just as much as they put the ANAL in bANAL.
The compere’s smile was at least as fake as a Politician’s or a Real Estate Agents, or a Dentists for that matter.
He opened the letter slowly & with the accompanied ‘tinny’ drum roll sound playing from a 5 watt speaker.
And then his cold flappy bloodless gums started to flap, with sound coming out.
“And the winner this year …Of the Stock-Standard Middle-Class Poetry Awards, aka the “MIDCLAPS”… is…as it has been every year since inception…It Goes to….
Yes me Zombies! – ‘The Anti-Poetry Non-Truth Factory Poetry Division Collective’ strikes again!
And yes, I’m afraid to say they have one it for the 100th straight year!
Ain’t ‘Rigo-nomics’ grand folks!
They’ve won with the exact same poem, but they’ve slightly rehashed it!
Ooooh! This is so…so…anti-surprising, isn’t it?!
Let me read it to you, as I know you’re all dying to hear it.
Wintery Forest Leaves
As the wintery leaves fell through the dense windswept forest,
The agile birds swooped between the trees,
Like a thread going through a needle,
Their spirited cries echoed though the valley gorges,
And reminded us of our long ago forgotten home,
Which had the strange but stylish hyphenated name of: I-coonta-fookin-recalla”
WAIT A MINUTE DEAR AUDIENCE!
SOMEONE HAS ILLEGALLY INTERFERRED WITH THE WINNERS ENTRY!
THEY’VE FALSELY ADDED AN EXTRA THE LAST LINE OF THIS POEM!
They’ve made it interesting and/or witty and/or unique and/or truthful!
They went BIM BIM BIM
When it was BLAND BLAND BLAND we wanted!
THIS IS ILLEGAL POETRY MY FRIENDS AND WILL NOT BE TOLLERATED!
The MIDCLAPS Awards are on hold indefinitely pending an investigation into this travesty!.
For who knows dear audience & sponsors? –
Perhaps there is a coup going on inside ‘The Anti-Poetry Non-Truth Factory Poetry Division’?
If we don’t nip this in the bud ASAP where will we be hmmm?
Meaningful, Witty Unique & Truthful poetry will abound about the world!
‘The Masses’ will surely un-enslave themselves!
‘The Evil One’ won’t like it!
Yes, Yes Yes, calm down now, take your seats…quell your murmurs…I know we cannot have that folks.
Yes Yes Yes – to the Doctor Sir standing up, I can understand that – Yes ‘we cannot upset Satan’, I agree that ‘it’s against our oath’.
Yes Yes Yes to the madam Lawyer standing up, I agree ‘it’s against our mandate’ – to ‘keep all that’s good in the dark’.
Yes Yes Yes to the Real Estate agent standing up with the for-sale sign on forehead, I agree it’s against clause 6-66 of our constitution ‘Good people cannot be allowed to have good things’.
Don’t worry folks leave it with me and the good folks at the Anti-Poetry-League-Limited aka APOLE
You good folks can rest easy now as you know as much as I do:
SATAN himself – our CEO – would never let anyone take a bite into APOLE and get away with it.
Please enjoy the snack buffet on your way out.
by Anton Martin Smith antonmartinsmithwrites@gmail.com
I had just finished listing to the old ‘Poet Laurette’ and was on my way out.
A spare coffee was needed for the usual night’s work – that is, writing.
For sipping a coffee while trying to be original certainly helps matters.
< Digression: >
Isn’t a pity that we if being truthful now have to say “excuse me for my keyboard clacking awaits”,
Versus yesteryear’s romantic “Excuse me Sir/Madam my quill & parchment & fine hardwood desk awaits”.
Yes it is a pity, but I remind myself that it’s the writing that matters vs the input method.
< Digression Ends >
“What do you do” said the coffee girl.
“I do some Carpentry & Handyman-ing, but that’s only half my life…
….the other half is sitting in front of a computer at night – ya’know – writing”.
I wasn’t sure if she respected the arts, but I was tired of hiding today,
And with the new owners – the cafe was now becoming more of an arts hangout to.
“Oh”, she says.
it was hard to decipher if this was a “good oh” or a “bad oh” or a neutral “oh”.
As I left the cafe she says “have fun in front of your computer!”
It sounded a little like a “jab” but we types are touchy on such matters, aren’t we?
As I was literally half out the door I reposted (in good humour of course).
“You never know – I might write a poem about you“
The 70-something Poet Laurette who was sitting quietly at a table laughed as he overheard.
“I hope not” she said.
“That’s why they say ‘the pen is mightier than the sword'” I doubly retorted.
Again, the Poet Laurette chortled.
And as I walked home on that perfect sunny day, I thought to myself:
Ah these trips to the cafe are getting better & better.
They are even beginning to foment material.
Why is it always true that the life-sliced-words have a certain ring?
Because they’re the freshly filtered words emerging from the ground.
That’s why.
Long live the cafe-produced-warblings –
For much like ourselves, we would all miss them had they not been there.
by anton martin smith antonmartinsmithwrites@gmail.com
Funny how a “loss of social status” can send people into depression & worse.
That “social status” was all an illusion anyway.
Anyone with really high “social status” is essentially just a character in a VR movie.
A loss of “social status” really just means the VR goggles came off
A Corporate Career in a big city means you are an avatar in a VR game similar to “The Hunger Games”.
When you are young & about to pursue a ‘corporate career’ remember this –
Mussolini himself said that Fascism should really have been called ‘corporatism’.
& you don’t want to follow the (very) Ill Duce’s lead (again) do you?
If you do then I’m afraid I’ll have to announce in hushed tones
“You’ve been VR’d”
Newsflash!!!
I have finished the last poem I was working on yesterday – So if you read the nor very good version – then read the new ‘not very good but hopefully marginally better version’ now called “The Lottery Economy”.
LINK:
Now that I’m here I may as well chat about it. We all know that when the lottery gets a big jackpot, people all line up at the lottery agents – well maybe that’s a thing of the past nowadays but I think that still happens.
For a long time now – when I see the lines I get a twinged in my heart – for it’s like it is an allegory of our modern economy driven lives – people suspending their disbelief in the reality of the tiny odds-on offer for a successful outcome. .. .so it’s just like “The economy” – i.e. jobs careers, moving to the city to improve your life, working your ass off & burning yourself out in the hope it will truly get you somewhere.
Yes it might work for some, but I think for many a decade now that is a losing strategy, person for person.
The odds don’t add up.
I hope the Poem “The Lottery Economy” sums that up properly when you read it.
in my opinion that Beast we call & bow down too, “The Economy” hasn’t worked for a long time, if ever.
We have mega cartel Corporates sucking the time & energy of Humans beings under the guise of “Good Jobs”.
I’m not against Jobs, I’m against Cartels masquerading as “Employers”.
With this becoming the norm, there is only ever going to be one winner in 100, tops.
Many small & medium players, is what works well for the most people.
I’m sure all the bad guys running the Cartel Scam called “The Modern Economy” know this inherently.
The outcome is their aim.
The mistake too many people make is thinking this isn’t the case.
The good news is we can still save things by supporting small & medium companies.
That’s why the beer I’m drinking now tastes good, is at a fair price, & is probably also good place to work.
By Martin Anton Smith
You are now gone,
An early exit stage left.
Yes I was a good friend,
But I also put a big wall up between us.
A wall that stopped us from being ‘brothers’.
And now that you are gone,
It has hit me that that was what you needed
.
Everyone thinks I was a great friend to you,
But I’m not sure that I really was.
You helped me be less of a bastard,
And at least we sat & drank beers quite a lot,
Not saying much at all,
Because silence was your catch phrase.
I was too too lazy it’s true,
And I know my lazyness was one coin side,
And your loneliness the other.
But I also know much of your loneliness,
Was not the type a ‘best friend’ could kill.
So I’ll try to not beat myself up too much.
A couple of swift mental gut punches this month will do.
And then no more.
Everyone half decent & above deserves to rest in peace,
Be they alive or dead.
And so that covers us both.
Farewell my friend.
By Martin Anton Smith
If you have to ask permission from another adult,
They are either your parent, babysitter, teacher, jailer, or boss.
There are no exceptions, it applies to everyone at all times.
Let this become your credo.
Your window to reality at all times of life –
your ability to see yourself.
After all, to be henpecked or rooster-pecked for that matter,
Is surely a date with death.
It’s not nice to watch from afar either.
By Martin Anton Smith
Two slaves of equal rank were on their work ‘tea break’.
Their names were Ramthess & Putenalmen.
The year was three thousand BC.
The place was ancient Egypt.
Their conversation went like this:
“Can you pass the leather strap, dear Ramthess”.
“Sure my friend Putenalmen – why not? – I’ve had a good gnaw of it”.
“Ah if I close my eyes & think of a camel it almost tastes good”.
“You know what? – that’s just what I was thinking before I handed it to you”.
” Ah Putenalman, you know what they say don’t you?”
“What’s that?”
“Great slaves think alike”
“Do they? Well makes sense – I mean how else could we all build these Piramids?”
“That’s True Putenalman And do you also know what?”
“What my dear Ramthess?”
“One day in the distant future, slaves like us will be their own Slave-masters & trade themselves to each other.”
“No No No! …But why would a Slave agree to enslave themselves”?
“Well my dear Putenalmen, in the future they will have a system called ‘The First Fifteen Years’.”
“Yes I am listening my good man Ramthess- go on”
“This thing called ‘The First Fifteen Years’ will be a giant encampment for all children pre-ordained to be slaves.”
“Sounds terrible Ramthess! Now let’s stop being so formal lets go by our knicknames: You ‘Ram’, me ‘Put’.”
“Yes agreed – don’t worry Put – it the story gets worse! Now at this camp their are Pharoah agents who are a special kind of Slave who act as an agent of the Pharoah – they will be called ‘teachers’ – it will be their jobs to over a fifteen year period brainwash these children to be both their own slaves & slavemasters.”
“Oh but that’s diabolicle Ram! The deception of it! Just think – that would mean the Slaves would never mount a mutiny! We Slaves keep our sanity only by dreaming of mutuny so we can escape, but if we are our own Slavemasters, how will we ever agree to let ourselves be mutineers?”
“Exactly dear Put – now you see why the Pharoah’s will do this – after all there have been 94 succesful Slave mutiny’s in Egypt just this last five years! They cannot let this behaviour stand, or soon the Pharoah’s magnificent empire will one day crumble into the sands of the great desert!”
“Well, yes Ram, it does make sense – but I don’t think they’ll ever be able to pull that off”
“Why do you say that, Put?”
“Well surely us Slaves will never be stupid enough to agree to put our children into those ‘First Fifteen Years Camps” – I mean we’d have to be insane to agree to that! Yes we Slaves are tired, yes we are downtrodden, Yes we are poor….but we are not stupid!”
“Well my dear Put do you remember that time you were afraid every second of the day because the the Slave-beater said he’d beat you some time over the next month, but wouldn’t tell you exactly when.”
“Yes ram – that was horrible – my mind was scrambled becasue of the constant fear I was in.”
“And do you remember that during that month you agreed to run around naked pretending to be a camel, just for your fellow slaves enjoyment?”
“Yes, I am ashamed to say that I did that silly thing that whole month long – as I said Ram, I did it because the Slave-beater had gotten into my mind!”
“So now you see that what I said is true. From a deep sense of fear, you agreed to do something you’d never do normally. If you were in fear every day for fifteen years straight, from when you were a tiny child right up to the start of adulthood – just imagine how more rediculous you would behave! This is what will happen in the future, Put.”
“I agree Ram, you are very wise, I think this will indeed happen in the future. I am glad we live now & not the future – at least we today can rightly dream of our own small slave mutiny, that might one day soon happen & set us free.”
“Yes Put, I wouldn’t want to live in a future like that either – now what kind of mutuny do you think we should have?”
“Well Ram, bloody, succesful & soon is always nice”.
“Touche, Put – touche”
End
by Martin Anton Smith
Once In a Corporate Office Job,
I once got a printed letter memo from HR,
Telling me of my “2% pay rise”,
& also, what the ‘new’ amount was.
I remember looking at the new amount.
Immediately something about the number didn’t quite feel right.
Then realised that it was actually a “pay cut”.
They had diddled me out of 1 Grand.
That letter summed up the workings of the madhouse I was in perfectly.
I didn’t even bother to follow it up.
I didn’t even feel annoyed angry or enraged.
I took the pay-cut-in-disguise-as-a-rise with depressed aplomb.
There was nothing else to do.
I told my next cubicle colleague about it –
They said the exact same thing happened to them.
They also didn’t do anything about it either.
Then I asked another – same story.
I guess deep down we all knew this brute fact:
There’s no profit in arguing with a madman.
.
by Martin Anton Smith
If Earth was a store it would be called:
Bondservants ‘R’ Us! ….(in giant flashing neon letters).
You know it’s TRUE.
What’s That?
But you have a ‘Career’?
Gimme A break.
That’s the thing they told you,
So, you’d produce more crap,
And trade your precious time on earth,
Without even an audible whimper.
Well – ‘at least I have my vices’ you think or say.
You Fool –
They own all the vices.
Sex drugs alcohol or whatever.
They wisely designed & advertised those vices.
As both your temporary escape,
And more importantly as your permanent chains.
It’s a devilish scheme.
It makes a man forget that his time & freedom is all he really has.
And be too tired & broken down to fight for it.
Like all good systems they’ve also designed it so you can’t live outside the system.
So that if you do try to leave – you risk total starvation & homelessness & a death on the streets.
So, If your too fearful for that, you only have these menu items:
Bondservant
Bondservant who polices other Bondservants
Bondservant who owns other Bondservants
Bondservants who own other Bondservants who own other Bondservants
These are the only options they give you.
What’s that you say?
“But I can work hard & become one of “them” – y’know, live the ‘American Dream’!”
No No No, You Fool – Can’t you see?
Success in ‘The American Dream’ is climbing the 4-tiered Bondservant system.
Those who I call “them” are the overlords outside the system, the ones that run it.
To be one of “them”, you have to be born into the cabal.
An a-priori predestination, if you will.
And don’t kid yourself – it’s nothing to be proud of or want.
“But if this is true”- I hear you cry “how do I stop myself going crazy or topping myself then?”
Easy – you accept you Bondservant fate with a wry smile,
Because by knowing the Truth then deep down you also know,
This absurdity here on Earth ain’t all there is.
Not by a long stretch.
Unless of course –
Earth is Hell itself.
Then I logically expect we’ll be reborn back into it all.
I agree with you – What a terrible excruciatingly blackening haranguing thought.
But on a more positive note,
Hell on Earth or not, all slaves can sneak a few good moments.
Just as the walking dead of WW1 did in between bouts of certain death.
They were smart enough to have a few laughs & ales between bombshells, shrapnel, & whizzing-past-your-ear bullets.
Yes, it is true my friend,
We can always grab good moments – right out of our polluted airs.
For by definition darkness cannot exist without light.
There has to be at least a few glorious photons to be had at all times.
And If life as a Human on Earth is not hell at all,
Then even a grumpy depressed beer-drinkin’ asshole like you or me has to admit,
One day things might just slightly improve.
Anton Martin Smith Writer 